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account. Sandman422. Anyone with access to the Internet and fi ve minutes could set up an anonymous account there and never worry about being traced. Okay, it was a joke. One of his online contacts playing a tasteless joke.
    Then a little mail icon appeared in his system tray. New mail.
    Escaping out of Sandman’s email, he found a second one from the same person.
    He hesitated only briefl y before opening it.
    IF YOU MESS WITH ME DAVID MIGHT NOT BE SO LUCKY NEXT TIME
    Shards of ice raced through Chris’s gut. The skin of his face L.A. BYTES 37
    felt tight. “You bastard,” he whispered to the silent screen.
    This time he opened the properties of the email and looked at the message source. It told him a whole lot of things that weren’t going to help him catch the prick. Sandman422 had sent his email from a Calnexxia server—Calnexxia was a local telecom company, spawned by the breakup of the telecommunications monopoly. The ISP that hosted Freemail used their servers and fi ber lines as conduits for their product.
    Chris ran a host lookup utility and found no surprises. The ISP matched the Calnexxia domain. Then he ran an Arin WHOIS
    search and got an organizational ID and a local Los Angeles address. Sandman422 had indeed used a free emailer to threaten David. He could have made the threat from anywhere. Not that Chris believed that. Sandman had to be local—how else would he know about David? He must have either been at the hospital, or—a horrible fear blossomed in his gut. Chris thought of the phone call from Troy Garcia. Had he received the same phone call Roz got? Was it Sandman who was spreading the story about his attack?
    His phone rang. Chris answered, hoping it was David.
    “Intelligent Security, Chris speaking—”
    “Hey, Chris,” Terry sounded scared. “You need to get down here right now.”
    “Something new happen?”
    “There’s some serious shit going on. Denton pretty well tore me a new one,” Terry said. “But he’s given me support in tracking this asshole down. I’ve isolated that computer on the third fl oor.
    Talked to a guy I know who’s done some work for the FBI and he told me how to secure it.”
    “Good.” Chris cradled the phone between his shoulder and his chin while he sorted through some papers he had pulled together earlier for another client.
    He was beginning to rethink his decision to work with Terry on this. It was promising to turn into another media circus—sure 38 P.A. Brown
    as shit this thing was going to become a public nightmare. But he’d already signed the contract, so his reluctance was moot.
    “Can you come down now? Denton wants a proposal on how we’re going to tackle this. I told him I’d have something on his desk for Wednesday.”
    Chris thought of David. No telling when he’d be home. He sure hadn’t gone out of his way to let Chris know his plans. He could be gone all night.
    Chris tucked the papers into a fi le folder. He thought of his aborted search for something to eat. “You hungry?” he asked.
    “Haven’t eaten yet, so I guess so,” Terry said.
    “Cafeteria still suck?”
    “What do you think?”
    “Tell me what you want and I’ll be there in thirty.”
    It ended up taking nearly fi fty minutes before Chris rolled into the hospital and had Terry paged. The system administrator loped off the elevator and grabbed Chris’s arm, nearly knocking the bags of takeout out of his hand and jostling the laptop case against his hip.
    “Hope there’s coffee in there,” Terry said.
    Chris handed him an extra large.
    “Come on,” Terry said. “Let’s sit in the cafeteria, the dinner rush is over.”
    Except for a pair of doctors in green scrubs and a woman nursing a bowl of soup, the small cafeteria was empty. Terry grabbed a table in the far corner.
    Chris dug into his pastrami, savoring the sharp bite of stone ground mustard. He drew a yellow legal pad out of his laptop case and while he ate, made notes.
    “Tell me where you are